POSTMODERN PREACHING rediscovers direct engagement between scriptures and tradition with the whole human experience. There are no restrictions to overcome, as presented by Modernity. Rather, human concerns and questions are recognized and addressed in texts that know the human condition thoroughly, yet also bear witness to the power of the sacred. The preacher hosts a "sacred conversation" between all past texts and each occasion they are read and interpreted publicly.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Proper 22 Year C

The writer of this laments or dirge over the destruction of Jerusalem personifies the City as a "widow," and as a "princess [who] has become a vassal." She weeps over her loss throughout the night. She once had many admirers, lovers and friends. The writer now turns to a more prosaic description of desolate Jerusalem. The population has been taken away into "exile and servitude." The roads to Zion, once crowed with pilgrims, are now empty. "Her foes have become the masters...." Zion has lost all her "majesty." The leaders have become like "stags that find no pasture."Echoing the psalms (22, 88 and 143, for examples), the writer of Lamentations turns from despair to hope. "When I remember this, I have hope: by God's loving kindness we are not destroyed;/for God's mercies are never-ending/and are new every morning." "You are good to those who wait with patience...."

OR

Presumably in response to the same crisis that impelled the writer of Lamentations-- the destruction of Jerusalem and deportation of her citizens to Babylon-- this psalm declares that it is impossible to sing "Zion's songs," as requested by their captors. "How can we sing a song of the Lord/on foreign soil?" If she wants to forget Jerusalem, the psalmist sings, "may my right hand wither/may my tongue cleave to my palate...." She cannot wait for revenge against Babylon. OR

A man of conscience, "Habakkuk," is distressed by the times in which he lives: "Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble?" "So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails." The writer says he will station himself so he can hear the Lord's response. "Then the Lord answered me and said: write the vision..." so large and plain even a runner can read it! "[T]here is still a vision for the appointed time...." It describes how things will actually end. "If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come...." "[T]he righteous live by their faith."Do not be envious when it seems as if "evil doers" are getting away with their actions, the psalmist writes, "they will quickly wither...." Rather, "Trust in the Lord and do good...." "Trust" the Lord and the Lord will "bring forth your cause like the lights/and your justice like high noon."

The writer of this "letter" to "Timothy" recalls their respective familial spiritual heritages before he exhorts him to "rekindle the gift of God that is within you...." The writer references Paul's well-known suffering for the faith, which included imprisonment and that Paul was "appointed" as a "herald and an apostle and a teacher...." He is not ashamed of these hardships he has endured to fulfill his calling. "For I know in whom I have put my trust...."

Jesus returns his attention to the apostles in Luke's narrative. In response to their request-- "Increase our faith!"-- Jesus suggests that "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed..." they could order trees to uproot themselves and replant themselves in the sea! He continues with an admonition unique to Luke about the expectations of discipleship. If you are a worker who is expected to work all day for your "Master" and then prepare the evening meal, would you really expect to be invited to "Take your place at the table?" Of course not. You would know that you eat "later." Nor do you expect any thanks. Quite the contrary, "we have done only what we ought to have done."

"You are good to those who with with patience...." (Lamentations 3:26 "There is till a vision for the appointed time.... If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come...." (Habakkuk) "Trust in the Lord and do good...." Psalm 37) "I know in whom I have put my trust." (Second Timothy) "We have done only what we ought to have done." (Luke)

The consistent biblical injunction is to do justice whether it is convenient or not, easy of difficult, rewarded or punished, is acknowledged or ignored, requires little or demands a lot from us, arrives or seems to never come. Why? Because we "trust" that God brings about justice occasionally and will bring it fully one day? Sure. But Luke's Jesus provides a more compelling reason: so that in the end we can say "we have done only what we ought to have done."

For Emmanuel Levinas, justice was the the question that trumps all others. In Totality and Infinity, he teases out some implications of his primary belief. "The Other" awakens one's "moral conscience," but more than that, the Other puts "in question my freedom." (p.84) If one allows it, consciousness of the needs of others puts me in a permanent indebtedness, "the consciousness of my injustice," as Levinas writes. (p.86) "The Other imposes himself as an exigency that dominates this [my personal] freedom...." (p.87) A surprising result, Levinas continues, is that the demand of the other "does not clash with [my] freedom but invests it...." It "invites" me "to justice." (p.88)If the biblical priority for justice is given even the smallest consideration (as small as a "mustard seed," for instance) then that might make us re-consider our expectations. We might want to never lose hope or trust that in ways and times only God knows justice might prevail. And, we find renewal in the biblical promise that God's full and final justice will be the last chapter in the story. We can also take daily comfort in the promiseparticipation in the announcement and assistance in constructing justice. But when these expectations fail us, there is this: "we have done only what we ought to have done."

Annalena Altarpiece, Convent of San Marco, Florence

Fra Giovanni da Fiesole ("Angelico") c.1400-1455

"Sacra Conversazione"

Fra. Angelico, a member of the preaching order of the Dominicans, is credited with introducing into the Western imagination the conceit of "sacra conversazione." Saints from the Bible, the past and the near-past are shown together in animated convrsation around the Madonna and Christ Child. In the "Angelina Altarpiece" in the Convent of San Marco in Florence, he depicts St. Peter Martyr a dynamic preacher ranked with Dominic himself and martyred in 1251, Saints Comas and Damian twins known for their gifts of healing and martyred in 303, St. John the Evangelist, St. Lawrence martyred in the persecutions of the Emperor Valerian in 258 and St. Francis of Assisi. Holding their texts for ready reference, they speak, listen and respond to each other in a timeless conversation initiated by the scriptures.

"Other voices are at once the past and future of my own voice. The past because they have always already called me and even named me, they have already addressed themselves to me, and through their immemorial past, immemorial as far as I am concerned since they preceded the I, they have always already gathered lights, no matter how obscure, in the place that becomes, little by little, my place. Future of my voice also, since it is only through them that I can learn to speak and to say something"

Jean-Luis Chretien, The Call and the Response, (p.81)--------------------------------------------------------------------------"You may say something new and yet it must all be old. In fact you must confine yourself to saying old things-- and all the same it must be something new! Different interpretations must correspond to different applications. A poet too has constantly to ask himself: 'but is what I am writing really true?' -- and does this necessarily mean: 'is this how it happens in reality?' Yes, you have to assemble bits of old material. But into a building."

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, (p. 40e)--------------------------------------------------------------------------"...'[D]econstruction' has this peculiarity: if we look back at its origin in the text of [Heidegger's] Being and Time, it is the last state of the tradition-- its last state of retransmission, to us and by us, of the whole tradition in order to bring it back into play in its totality. To put the tradition into play according to deonstruction, according to Destruktion, (a term Heidegger was determined to protect against Zerstorung, i.e. against 'destruction,' and that he characterized as Abbau, 'taking apart') means neither to destroy in order to form anew nor to perpetuate-- two hypotheses that would imply a system given as such and untouchable as such. To deconstruct means to take apart, to dissemble, to losen the assembled structure in order to give it some play to the possibility from which it emerged but which, qua structure, it hides."